Posts Tagged ‘American Muslims’

The lesson from the Boston Marathon bombings could not possibly be clearer. Yet few people, due to various complications, will address that real issue.

Part of the problem is this. Most powerful institutions and people say that Islam is a religion of peace. There’s no problem, except for a few mysterious extremists who just seem to pop up either at random or due to American and Western sins.

The next largest segment says that Islam is an inherently violent and extremist religion so since the problem is Islam there’s nothing to do but to combat it directly in some form.

Both of the main Western responses, then, deny the importance of waging a real and serious battle within Islam.

Yet where do the terrorists come from? In the case of these two brothers, they were Muslims all of their lives and yet suddenly they became—without any major direct experience—radical terrorists.

The cause, of course, was revolutionary Islamist propaganda, especially but by no means exclusively, from al-Qaeda. There are literally hundreds of internet sites, videos, preachers, books and everything else you can think of that promote revolutionary Islamism. They tell Muslims that they should and must be revolutionaries and terrorists; they cite holy works to do so.

What the heck is there on the other side?

Let’s think for a moment about some of the things that don’t exist:

–A Radio Free Islam that systematically preaches (the last word is not chosen at random) an anti-extremist approach to Islam.

–Virtually no programs at mosques to explain why terrorist, Islamist and extremist Islamic positions are wrong and bad. Wrong because they don’t accord with what those who say so deem to be a “proper” Islam; bad because they are immoral, ruin the lives of those who embrace such ideology, and hold back the societies where enough such people have such a view.

–Remarkably little literature and remarkably few preachers—especially ones who are as well-financed as the radicals—that a young Muslim is going to read on internet or hear on videos or elsewhere which suggests an alternative path.

–Where are the videos? Where are the web sites? Where is the social disapproval among Muslims?

On this basis one could argue that there is no moderate—or at least no non-violent, non-revolutionary– Islam that can be developed. But that simply isn’t true. The works and the moderate individuals exist but they are not given support, even in Western countries, nor do they have the resources to wage the battle.

It is like the situation in the Cold War when the Soviets and their supporters were well-organized and well-financed but the social democrats, liberals, and conservatives opposing them were not. Not only the U.S. government–through covert and other means–stepped into the breach but so did lots of organizations, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and others.

IN THE ERA of Islamism there are a lot of major problems in terms of its opponents’ responses. First, any Western, non-Muslim financing or help to those groups would be used to discredit them. Second, in a bizarre manner Western societies favor the radicals, giving them a good press and praise. Third, moderate Muslims are penalized and ignored.

Fourth, the ability to critique precisely what is radical in Islam and what is wrong with Islamism is handicapped by the successful effort to brand any attempts at making such distinctions as “Islamophobia” instead of a sensible fear of revolutionary Islamism. It is equivalent to branding any such attempt to critique Communism as anti-Sovietism. Communists tried such techniques but they only worked to a very limited extent.

Fifth, part of the last three problems is due to the far left’s (often pretending to be liberal) alignment with radical Islamism (the current world’s most powerful right-wing ideology), despite the latter’s repression of women’s rights, desire to murder gays, and opposition to just about everything else the left is supposed to believe.

Sixth, who cares that Islamist organizations that are mere covers for radical activities issue a statement decrying an Islamist terror attack simply because it was staged by some other group, wrong place, or at an inconvenient time? Let them campaign against radical, violent and intolerant interpretations of Islam or be exposed for who they really are.

The Jewish Press has regularly noted the efforts of the politically correct crowd to place concerns about Muslim fundamentalism beyond the reach of normal discourse. Thus we had something to say about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s claim that any questioning of the efforts to build a mosque at ground zero was ipso facto bigoted and violated the sponsors’ right to free speech.

We have also contrasted the tendency of some in political and media circles to resist linking Muslim perpetrators of various violent crimes to the teachings of Islam with the haste exhibited in presumptively tying non-Muslim perpetrators with right-wing or Christian zealotry.

And we have expressed dismay over efforts to delegitimize as incendiary the investigative hearings of Congressman Peter King into the possible role of American Muslim insularity in promoting homegrown terrorism.

We haven’t yet addressed the growing concern across America with attempts to insinuate Sharia (Muslim religious) law into our legal system. To be sure, our courts have occasionally sought guidance from other legal systems in analyzing problems and they enforced decisions of religious courts sitting as arbitration panels when agreed to by the parties as long as the legal rules do not violate fundamental American values.

Although Shariah law is often profoundly inconsistent with U.S. law and values, there is a growing phenomenon of courts applying Sharia law to Muslim litigants without prior agreement – and this has created a firestorm of debate.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, The New York Times has now weighed in with a major story not addressing the issue but instead pooh-poohing its significance.

This past Sunday the Times ran a front page story headlined “Behind an Anti-Shariah Push/ Orchestrating a Seemingly Grass-Roots Campaign.” Centrally pictured was one David Yerushalmi, replete with yarmulke and beard. The caption read, “David Yerushalmi has quietly led a national movement.”

In pertinent part, here is what the Times story had to say:

Tennessee’s latest woes include high unemployment, continuing foreclosure and a battle over collective-bargaining rights for teachers. But when a Republican representative took the Statehouse floor during a recent hearing, he warned of a new threat to his constituents’ way of life: Islamic law .Similar warnings are being issued across the country as Republican presidential candidates, elected officials and activists mobilize against what they describe as the menace of Islamic law in the United States.

Since last year, more than two dozen states have considered measures to restrict judges from consulting Shariah, or foreign and religious laws more generally. The statutes have been enacted in three states so far .

A confluence of factors has fueled the anti-Shariah movement, most notably the controversy over the proposed Islamic center near ground zero in New York, concerns about homegrown terrorism and the rise of the Tea Party. But the campaign’s air of grass-roots spontaneity, which has been carefully promoted by advocates, shrouds its more deliberate origins.

In fact, it is the product of an orchestrated drive that began five years ago in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the office of a little-known lawyer, David Yerushalmi, a 56-year-old Hasidic Jew with a history of controversial statements about race, immigration and Islam. Despite his lack of formal training in Islamic law, Mr. Yerushalmi has come to exercise a striking influence over American public discourse about Shariah .

The Times story went on to opine (and remember, this is a news story, not an editorial) without any substantiation:

Yet, for all its fervor, the movement is arguably directed at a problem more imagined than real. Even its leaders concede that American Muslims are not coalescing en masse to advance Islamic law. Instead they say, Muslims could eventually gain the kind of foothold seen in Europe, where multicultural policies have allowed for what critics contend is an overaccommodation of Islamic law.

This month marks a distressing milestone – the 24th anniversary of Jonathan Pollard’s imprisonment for transferring classified information to Israel.

The Pollard case is a mark of shame for the American Jewish community. His plight and the politics surrounding it are rendered absurd when seen against the backdrop of the government’s reaction, and the reaction of some Jewish leaders to U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s jihadist massacre of 12 soldiers and one civilian at Ft. Hood earlier this month.

Pollard was arrested in November 1985 for transferring classified documents regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons and other crucial information to Israel. Pollard acted as an Israeli agent during a time of unprecedented animosity toward Israel in U.S. defense and intelligence circles.

Determined to punish Israel for is successful strike against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, the U.S. froze Israel out of intelligence information regarding the Arab world which the Americans had until then shared with their Israeli counterparts on a routine basis. Indeed, the information Pollard transferred to Israel was arguably information the U.S. was required to transfer to Israel by dint of its commitment to protect Israel’s qualitative edge over its enemies.

In what has often been characterized as a miscarriage of justice, after Pollard was arrested and indicted the federal prosecution reneged on a plea bargain it had acceded to and convinced a judge to sentence Pollard to life in prison.

Even if his legal treatment was acceptable, both the fervor with which Pollard was prosecuted and the life sentence he received were wildly disproportionate to the treatment of agents of other states that like Israel are not adversaries of the U.S. Indeed, as Pollard’s father pointed out in an article last week in The Jerusalem Post, even John Walker Lindh, the U.S. citizen who was arrested for fighting with the Taliban in the war against the U.S. in Afghanistan, received only 21 years in prison for his act of war against the U.S.

And yet, despite Pollard’s unfair and inequitable treatment by federal authorities, the American Jewish community has been at best inconsistent in its attempts to secure Pollard’s release from prison. At no time in the past 24 years has the organized Jewish leadership made a concerted and public demand that Pollard be released. Moreover, at no time has it issued a ringing condemnation of his unfair treatment by the federal prosecution and prison authorities alike.

To the contrary, American Jewish leaders have consistently argued that if Pollard’s case is to be raised at all, it should be raised quietly, behind closed doors. Pollard, after all was guilty. Raising his case, it is argued will simply anger U.S. authorities, and strengthen the position of those who claim that neither American Jews nor Israelis can be trusted. Then too, it is claimed that raising the Pollard case publicly will signal the average American that Jews are treacherous.

Proof that this view is little more than an excuse for American Jewish leaders not to take the controversial route and demand Pollard’s release is their behavior on the issue during former president George W. Bush’s tenure in office.

It is inarguable that on a visceral level, Bush was favorably disposed to Israel. Facing an American president that clearly liked Israel and Israelis, it could have been expected that American Jews would seek to persuade Bush to grant Pollard clemency, particularly when as former CIA director R. James Woosley has noted, the U.S. and Israel are fighting the same enemy today.

And yet, it was during Bush’s tenure that American Jews in Washington found themselves under the greatest suspicion since Pollard’s arrest. During the friendly Bush years, American Jews – from then-deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz to the last American Jew on the National Security Council to AIPAC in the non-governmental sector – were placed under a microscope and pilloried as fifth columnists by political opponents and law enforcement bodies alike. American Jewish leaders were too busy defending the likes of AIPAC lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman from self-evidently false espionage charges to be bothered by Pollard’s plight.

What the Bush period indicates is that there is a built-in anti-Jewish bias in much of official Washington that is impervious to any particular administration’s position on Israel. Among this permanent bureaucracy, it is a writ of faith that American Jews are a priori fifth columnists and that Israel – the true source of their loyalty – is the most dangerous adversary the U.S. faces.

By the same token, as was made murderously clear with Hasan’s rampage at Fort Hood, the same permanent bureaucracy holds that no Muslim Americans can ever be suspected as fifth columnists even when evidence to that effect is pouring in. The FBI refused to revoke Hasan’s security clearance despite his close association with known jihadists and his prolonged e-mail contact with an Islamic cleric with ties to three of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The army for its part, refused to discharge Hasan from the service despite his repeated protestations of sympathy for enemies of America and his public justification of the murder of U.S. servicemen by Muslim-American soldiers.

In the aftermath of his rampage, during which he called out “Allahu Akbar” in a crowded room before shooting some forty people, official Washington went to absurd lengths to pretend away the obvious fact that Hasan was an enemy agent. Everyone from President Obama to Army Chief of Staff General George Casey to Fort Hood Commander Gen. Robert Cone to the FBI loudly proclaimed that we mustn’t jump to conclusions and that it isn’t clear, or there is no way of knowing, what motivated Hasan to murder his fellow soldiers and officers. Certainly there was no reason to suspect that the fact that he is Muslim has anything to do with his actions.

The contrasting experiences of American Jews and American Muslims in the U.S. government and in Washington generally are explained by two essential facts. First, to date, no one has been compelled to pay a political price for telling lies about American Jews. And second, many have been forced to pay a political price for telling the truth about American Muslims.

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of this state of affairs is the central role many Jews have played both in legitimizing the suspicions cast on their innocent co-religionists and in delegitimizing the casting of justified suspicions on American Muslims with ties to jihadists at home and abroad.

From George Soros, who sponsors groups like J Street and the National Iranian-American Council that portray pro-Israel activists and those calling for Iran to be denied nuclear weapons as extremists to NYU Hillel Director Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, who called for Jews on campus to defend Muslims against those who point out that Hasan’s religion was the central motivator for his actions, American Jews are at the forefront of the effort to make it politically costly for Jews to voice support for Israel and for Americans of all backgrounds to point out that there are American-Muslim fifth columnists seeking to kill their countrymen in the name of their religion.

As Jonathan Pollard begins yet another year behind bars, it is time for the American Jewish community to stand up for its rights. Until a loud, consistent demand is made for equal treatment for American Jews, not only will Pollard remain in prison, but all American Jews who wish to serve their country will be forced to operate in the shadow of his persecution.

Caroline Glick is senior contributing editor at The Jerusalem Post. Her Jewish Press-exclusive column appears the last week of each month. Her book “The Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad,” is available at Amazon.com.